


Atmosphere (or, a Casual Affair)

by Phosphorite



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Angst, Communication Failure, M/M, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-13
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2018-01-01 08:23:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1042554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phosphorite/pseuds/Phosphorite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're... the days of tentative, fluctuating friendship, of the calm before the storm; and while Kise's pretty sure elbowing someone in the face is not the ultimate display of friendship he was always searching for, it's not as though Aomine was ever supposed to be a normal friend at all.</p>
<p>(Thing is, though, you can't fake something you don't believe in forever.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atmosphere (or, a Casual Affair)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Atmosphere (or, a Casual Affair)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112217) by [m0ette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/m0ette/pseuds/m0ette)



> Yooo so, somehow I got dragged into writing for Kurobas and.... yeah. I've really been meaning to write less artsy fic I swear, but bear with me just this once. The inspiration for the premise came to me on a whim while listening to Casual Affair by Panic! At the Disco (shut up), and I could not get it out of my head since; to preface the story, I could therefore use the lines "Stay for as long as you have time / So the mess that we'll become / Leaves something to talk about."
> 
> Dedicated to Marta, because she's ruined my life with these two.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

 

**cop·y**

[kop-ee] verb, cop·ied, cop·y·ing.

 

_to_ _make a copy of; transcribe; reproduce: to copy a set of figures from a book._

_to receive and understand (a radio message or its sender)._

_to follow as a pattern or model; imitate._

Thing is, though.

You can't fake something you don't believe in forever.

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Since long before junior high, those words have haunted him everywhere he goes.

He knows the pattern: the quixotic, doe-eyed girls, the awkward laughter, the faint traces of a blush and twitchy hands hidden behind the pleats of their skirt.

_The way your hair brushed past your face. The way your eyes glinted in the sun. How your smile brightened up the entire classroom when you walked in – that, that was the moment I knew fell in love with you, at first sight._

Sometimes they smile. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes he feels like saying something, and sometimes he does not. Sometimes he goes along with it; once, twice, three four five six seven times – he finds it effortless to mimic their enthusiasm, to charm someone using their own exact routine. It's a game of disjointed charades, but it's not love.

It doesn't make him feel anything.

(It doesn't really mean anything.)

 

 

Since long before junior high, there's but one thing he's known for certain.

Ambition at first glance.

_Have you tried keeping up with the track team? Can you beat our school's goal record in football? Oh, I bet you can't score more than four homeruns in a single game of baseball!_

The surge of excitement, the thrill of adrenaline. The kick of plunging head first into the unknown. That languid, pleasant feeling that works its way up his spine, fuels his senses, and sets him alight.

He cannot mimic that feeling.

Somehow, he knows this is what makes it special.

Yet the older he gets, the more it begins to slip away: the challenges, the audacious nerve, the overwhelming accomplishment; one by one they all pave way to apathy until there's nothing left, until all that remains is a void of potential that he cannot quite grasp at nor manifest into words.

It feels like something, and it feels like nothing at all.

It feels like forfeit, and like the slow ascent before an inevitable fall.

 

 

But there comes a day,

(a day not unlike all the others)

when a stray basketball unexpectedly sends his world swerving off course;

and suddenly there's a person fixed right in the center of that universe, right in the middle, and he realizes that he _feels_ again.

(A curious look, a voice full of laid back laughter, a lifetime of chances––)

_You still need something?_

_Yes_ , he wants to scream, scream until his lungs give out, scream until he's laughing instead, because it's been so long and it's _here_ again – the excitement, the light-headedness and the tension, palpable enough to make him want to burst out of his skin.

He doesn't stop to think about why he's never felt it towards another person before.

Because there is no such thing as love at first sight, and when Aomine stares him down in the doorway with a look of honest confusion on his face, a tiny, unnoticeable piece inside Kise shifts with naked ambition that feels as unprecedented as it feels addictive.

He smiles, and something may or may not change forever in that moment.

 

 

In the days that follow, he will learn how to grimace; in the weeks that pass, he will learn how to glare; and in the months that wade by like animated frames, he will learn what it's like to burn with the overwhelming frustration of near misses and half defeats, but that smile... it never really leaves him again.

(It doesn't have to mean anything.)

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It's.... strange.

He tries so hard, and yet he doesn't have to try at all.

_Once more once more once more and I know I'll get this right_

Kise never does, but he cannot stop.

Something pushes him onward every day, and giving up is not an option. Being upset, being happy – words with such abstract meaning blend and intertwine with one another, until he no longer knows what it is that he feels at all; three hours in, there are blisters on his feet and bruises on his arms, but he cannot stop.

_Go home already_ , Aomine's tired eyes always say, and the tips of Kise's fingertips burn with chafed skin and the friction of his frustration; he's not sure why his smile stretches into a grin while he imagines strangling Aomine dead in his tracks, but the feeling leaves him shaking with suppressed laughter anyway.

_Tomorrow_ , Kise says instead, and while his lungs are shrieking in agony, his voice comes out clear.

He's never felt better and he's never felt worse.

_I'll try again tomorrow._

It's a promise, and a curse.

 

 

They fall into a predictable rhythm, infused with a rowdiness that seems so at odds with the relative calmness of their teammates. He doesn't know how it happens, but he doesn't have to; every day Kise comes to school thinking _today_ , and every day he leaves screaming _tomorrow_ , and that's just how it is and how it goes.

Of course, it doesn't matter how many times he loses. There are so many other ways in which he knows how to win instead. It doesn't take much – a misplaced comment, a wry grin, a tethered nerve; he learns to differentiate between the various tones of the second syllable of his name, the way Aomine's eyes narrow in annoyance, how Kuroko hides his amused smile in the collar of his blazer when he thinks no-one's looking.

Day after day in practice Aomine shuts him down, and day after day at school Kise tunes him in.

They're... tiny, pointless victories, and they don't mean anything; yet he treasures them almost as much as the split second defeats in game, because they shift something, they lift something, they make him feel...

(like he's changing, like he's evolving, like there are ways in which Aomine will never completely be out of his reach;

times like when he accidentally banged his head against the door of his locker after practice, and how it made Aomine double over twofold in laughter; how he'd throw –with excellent accuracy, curse his inevitable but perfect aim– a full water bottle that landed directly in Aomine's face, then scramble out of the locker room with his life; and how he tried, tried, _tried_ not to think about the reason why that murderous glare was always accompanied by a grin, but

sometimes he remembers anyway, and

it is around here that the restlessness seeps into his bones and keeps him up at night, and he cannot help but wonder, _wonder_ )

 

 

There are moments when he could swear he can see light pouring out of his hands, like a radiance that seeps out of his skin.

It flows across the squeaks and the hollers of the gymnasium, it lingers in the listlessness of the classroom, it envelops him during the lunch breaks spent trying not to gag at Momoi's handmade bentou boxes and watching Kuroko read.

Yet more than anything, those moments coincide with Aomine's stifled grins, the silent smiles, the flickers of something tangible amidst a world of taunts and jibes and Kise's own, slowly wavering heart.

They're... the days of tentative, fluctuating friendship, of the calm before the storm; and while he's pretty sure elbowing someone in the face is not the ultimate display of friendship he was always searching for, it's not as though Aomine was ever supposed to be a normal friend at all.

(Because one of these days Kise is going to surpass Aomine in every way imaginable, and all of this is–– practice, for the moment when the gnawing traces of ambition die down inside him; because they must do, eventually, one day, until he can look Aomine in the face and not feel restless with the weight of some unnamed emotion tearing at the walls of his resolve.)

It... might mean something, probably, if he ever stopped for a moment to think about it;

but the days grow old as the nights grow cold and before long it's Winter.

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It's easy not to think.

It's harder to forget.

In the year that passes, he'll think and remember and think again, during the rainy afternoons they hit each other with umbrellas and make tiny paper planes out of exams they've failed; and he wishes he could hold onto those fleeting days of idle stupidity, to the tournaments they win with flying colours, to the warmth of Aomine's arm snaking around his shoulder in a triumphant cheer.

(He wishes he could freeze those frames forever, as they run through the corridors screaming like they own these halls;

_we own the world, after all_

but time won't hold on, no matter how Kise tries to lose himself in the thrill of the moment, and by the time he realizes what's changed, it's already too late.)

It feels like a sunset, it feels like the turn of the tide.

It feels like a failure, and Aomine's slowly diminishing smile.

(Six people turn up at practice, then five, then four; one by one the voices dull until the echoes fade, and when Kise leans his hands against the window in the empty corridor, he's finding it harder to imitate his ambition by the day.)

He tries to tell himself, that it's okay;

because the desperate, growing frustration inside him might not be growing any smaller but it's _something_ and maybe, maybe, one of these days

(it won't mean anything anymore)

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

In his final year of junior high, Kise wakes up to the sound of silence on a grey Tuesday morning, and knows four things without a shred of doubt:

one – the void of apathy, of unfulfilled potential and wasted ambition, has returned.

two – one way or another, this fact is inherently tied to Aomine.

three – there has to be a way to overcome this feeling.

four – it has to happen now.

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It's not meant to happen the way it ultimately does, though.

Kise might not be sure about a lot of things in life, but he is sure of this.

The irony is that he understands it the second the words leave his mouth, cutting the air in tepid fragments like an oscillation that he can still sense long after the echo dies down; his voice comes out low, and when it connects at the base of Aomine's ear, there's a visible jolt of tension that runs from Aomine's spine to his shoulders, all the way down his arms.

Kise opens his mouth anew, and for a split moment he wants to take it back – _no_ , he feels like screaming, this isn't how this was supposed to go, _I'm sorry, I panicked, I didn't know what to do_ , but it's useless – because Aomine draws in a sharp breath like he draws Kise around in a sharp tug, and something disjointed and weary inside Kise kicks in with or without his will.

He senses the wry smile that snakes on his lips, like a preordained mechanism that grinds these gears into motion; it strains the side of his mouth with forced enthusiasm, but the intensity cannot falter for the one, two, three seconds that Aomine stares him directly in the face.

(No;

it's no use now;

because this is a game Kise has to win, even if it means having to cheat.)

His smile holds, and his voice echoes with a Winter that never ends.

_Hey, you know_

_it wouldn't have to mean anything._

 

 

It's over.

In those few words he feels everything about himself shift – like a copied technique, like an imitation of life, like a caricature of the person he thinks he must become in order to push through this; because there's a part of him that _needs_ this, somehow, with enough silent despondency that it makes his hands tremble.

(It does something, it breaks something, but if he loses, he is lost for good.)

He wishes he understood why there's a split frame of hurt –disappointment?– in Aomine's stare, but it's gone before he can tackle it head on, lost in the flash of something almost violent in those dark eyes instead; in the seconds that pass, the shadows of the locker room stand as still as Kise's heart, listening to the faraway ringing of a world outside these walls.

_You're_

_annoying_

It's the response Aomine ultimately settles for after what feels like light years of silence; and while he might shove Kise against the lockers with enough vitriol to hurt, he also drowns out any half-hearted cries of pain with an aggressive, haphazard kiss;

and there might be a tiny part of Kise that is in hysterics, because the moment he feels Aomine's fingers digging into his shoulder blades, he knows that _you will never be able to forget this for as long as you live_ ;

that all of this is a mistake, because their teeth clang together awkwardly and Aomine swears under his breath before ungracefully nudging Kise's lips apart with his tongue, and _instead of making it better this will make everything so much worse_ ;

because it's the worst kiss he's ever had but it's also _the only one you ever want to have, today and tomorrow and the day after that_ , and the absoluteness of that realization makes him want to die.

 

 

....He's pretty sure it means something,

(pretty sure it means a whole fucking lot)

in ways that he cannot properly think about, in the moments of frantic and misguided groping that follow, because there's something so naked and vulnerable seething underneath the surface that it takes everything Kise has got to fake his way through it, to mimic the girls he never cared about and who never cared about him.

(It's better this way, he tells himself, it's easier this way, he convinces himself, because he still cannot copy the raw frustration that radiates off Aomine's entire figure and something about the irony of this would make him laugh bitterly, if he didn't feel like coming apart at the seams instead.)

It's a miracle of puberty and frenzied hormones that either one of them gets off at all. And it's not that it doesn't feel–– (strange? bizarre?) good, but–– when he pushes his forehead against Aomine's collarbone afterwards in a mess of half-discarded clothing and unfastened belt buckles, Kise's breath comes out in short, staccato gasps, his shoulders won't stop trembling, and he cannot, will not lift his head to catch the inevitable emptiness in Aomine's eyes.

It wasn't meant to happen this way, and they both probably know;

but Kise doesn't know what to do anymore, and then it's too late.

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

They don't talk to one another in three days.

As much as they have all begun to unravel as a collective team, there's still an eerie absence in the place of whatever racket the two of them used to cause together before; nobody comments on it, but there are moments when Kise cannot escape the weight of Kuroko's silent, confused stare anyway.

By Friday Momoi asks Aomine something about their upcoming finals, and Kise misses what it is exactly but he catches Aomine saying his name; and it's not much, it's barely anything, but it makes him lift his head anyway in time to confront Aomine's gaze.

(There's... a flicker of life, a flicker of light, and it could pass as quickly as it comes but–– somehow, it feels like he knows that Kise knows that once Momoi skips home with her girlfriends at the end of the day and their receding laughter grows fainter in the distance, he'll be waiting for Kise by the gates anyway, and then, well)

_It doesn't have to mean anything, right?_

...Why does it hurt, anyway?

It.... shouldn't, for all the ways in which Kise has been telling himself the exact same thing for nights on end, hoping to make the words ring more true; the way he's played the scene from three days ago over and over in his head, trying to decide whether it's worse if none of it ever comes to pass again, or if it does;

but maybe, there's still a chance that the words will become true, if Aomine believes in them instead, if Kise can somehow learn to pull that emotion off him and make it his own.

(It's not dreadful, this time, the way they kiss; it's almost... tentative, or hesitant, or–– shy? in a way that makes Kise think of confessions behind the bike shed, of first kisses and awkward attempts at holding hands; and for a moment he feels like something inside of him continues to break.)

 

 

He doesn't understand how it's possible to be so happy and upset at the same time.

It's a memory that finally catches up with Kise two months later, like a shadow of the days past, a remnant of the ambition he cannot grasp at anymore.

It's... the same, isn't it?

_Frustration or happiness, just what is it that I..._

It... must be, after all; the only reason that drives him on, that one listless afternoon like so many others that inevitably follow; when the aimless, hormonal fumbling become whispers of _my parents are away for the entire weekend_ and the weeks blur in a kaleidoscope of self-loathing and lust; when he just sits here, staring at the waning sun cross-legged in his bed with Aomine's sleeping face nuzzled against his waist and it doesn't mean anything, anything at all.

How could it,

when the only times Aomine doesn't glare him down with some deep-rooted contempt are the moments he's asleep by his side; when the only words they utter to one another outside these disjointed occasions of misplaced weakness are brief and dry in tone; when the day always sets sooner or later, and Kise is left feeling as hollow as the expression in Aomine's eyes.

(And it keeps gnawing away at something Kise thought he'd long since let go of, but he cannot will each and every shred of his ambition down; before long, Aomine always shifts in his sleep to mutter out his name and Kise knows that

_I'm_

_probably going insane_ )

 

 

Sometimes, he could swear someone knows.

Sometimes, he could swear Momoi wants to say something, but she holds her tongue as though she knows something he does not.

Sometimes, he wants to scream everything off the rooftops, only to realize there is nothing at all to scream.

(This is why he knows it has to end.)

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It ends with a book.

On the day Momoi agrees to help Kise study for finals by the cramped library table at their school, she pushes back in her seat and slams down a worn-down copy of third year English grammar.

_Sorry I'm late – I couldn't find my text book, so I had to go and borrow Dai-chan's,_ she speaks in a hurry, pulling back her cotton candy hair with a single swoop. As she flips the cover, her nose quickly wrinkles in disgust.

_God, this thing is falling apart! What's he doing, spending all the time he skips practice to kick his books around? I swear–– hmm?_

Her voice comes to a sudden pause as she pulls out a piece of paper hidden between the pages; the red, circled mark on the upper right corner discloses its purpose, while the mischievous smile on Momoi's lips discloses her curiosity.

_Not very surprising_ , she breathes out, shaking her head at the returned exam paper, but soon pauses anew when her eyes catch onto something further down the sheet. _Oh?_

It's an ominous-sounding _oh_ , and in retrospect Kise often wonders what may have happened, had he never reacted to it at all; but the look on Momoi's face shifts with something foreboding, more subdued with silent concern, as though she feels like she has stumbled upon something private.

(That, in and of itself, should be enough a warning sign, but Kise cannot help it; something inside him snaps, and his hand reaches out of its own accord.)

Momoi lets out a small sound of surprise when he yanks the paper off her hands, but makes no effort to resist. Scanning down the sheet, many of Aomine's lazy translations seem hilariously off the mark, but Kise catches what Momoi was staring at right away.

The teacher has drawn several question marks in the margin next to an answer towards the end, where two lines of English dialogue require a translation in Japanese underneath:

_A: What does this word mean?_

_B: It doesn't mean anything._

Below the example, there is enough space for both lines, but Kise finds but one answer. The teacher's enthusiastic question marks only add to the absurdity of the moment when he senses his blood running cold; suddenly the room feels too small, the space too cramped, Momoi too aware of all of this and he–– he cannot stay, he cannot leave, and he doesn't know anything out of anything anymore.

He turns the sheet over, crams it between the pages of the book and flashes Momoi a carefree smile; because his body works on reflex while his emotions work on overdrive and it's fine it's fine it's completely _fine_ ––

(But the image of that clear, tauntingly crisp handwriting that differs so much from all the other haphazard letters scribbled down on the paper, it never really leaves his head.)

_B: BUT WHAT IF I WANT IT TO_

 

 

Later that night he stares at his phone and the myriad of two-word e-mails filed under ✧ﾟ･: * _Aominecchi_ *:･ﾟ✧, and understands that he just cannot do this anymore.

There's a paralyzing fear that sets in his limbs and it feels so overwhelming, somehow, because he just _doesn't know what he's supposed to do_ anymore, but he knows he cannot do this.

He doesn't know why it makes him want to spontaneously combust and scream. He doesn't know why it makes him want to buckle down and cry. He doesn't–– want it to stop, but sooner or later the mess that they have become will blow up right in his face, and probably just destroy them both.

Or just destroy him, and

he cannot let that happen, not now, not when all he ever wanted was to surpass Aomine and just finally _feel_ that surge of ambition again; but he feels so weak now, with each and every one of his dreams dissolving in his hands, and everything he seems to say or do lately just makes it worse.

(What Aomine wants or doesn't want is irrelevant; Aomine is unreliable and an idiot and doesn't care about anything anymore these days. The mere idea that Kise would trust a single thing he says is ridiculous and laughable, but a part of him already _wants_ to believe, and that... that is his final cue for a curtain call, before his mimicked indifference begins to crack even further.)

But even after he stops responding to Aomine's e-mails, after he repeatedly fails to show up on time without a word, after Aomine finally gets the hint and stops waiting around for him by the gates after school, something in Kise's chest still feels like eating itself from the inside out;

(It hurts less, he tells himself, than how it would on the day all of this inevitably implodes on itself; and with that he deletes the e-mails and smiles at Momoi's with dead eyes until she no longer tries to hold his gaze either.)

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

They all graduate, and they all part ways.

What they leave behind is a legacy, and a lifetime of apathy.

It... should probably feel sadder than it does, but somehow all that Kise feels upon the prospect of entering high school is a wave of numbness. Then relief.

He'll go home, fold his old uniform like he folds three years of memories: a year of blissful oblivion, a year of languid afternoons waged in friendship, a year of self-loathing and unspoken dreams. They all lie in a box tucked far underneath his bed, and somehow he thinks it's enough to try and forget.

In some ways, it probably is.

 

 

(Months and months later he'll stand on that court and stare Aomine's aggressive indifference directly in the face, and drowns the remnants of his past in the adrenaline of desperate resolve.

It's not enough, it's never enough.

He loses like he has lost ever since the day this began, and when he cries, those tears of defeat are streaked with the hysterical trace of knowing that he probably always will.)

Whether it means anything doesn't matter, because this is what he chose and this is what he's become, and he only has himself to blame.

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

They say a story only has a happy ending when finished prematurely.

In the year that follows, he sometimes thinks of this; thinks of his second year in junior high, and all the things ruined by relentless ambition. When his new teammates curiously probe at his past, Kise is quick to bury the unease under a layer of bright smiles and over-exaggerated stupidity, quick to build new relationships to replace the ones he has lost.

There'll be days when all of it feels like a fading nightmare, when he is able to block out everything but the memories that fill him with gentle warmth; and it's those moments that he thinks of Kuroko's silent loyalty, of Midorima's stern eccentricity, of Murasakibara's predictable laziness, and even Akashi's relentless determination.

He'll think of Momoi and feel a tiny, involuntary sting, but it's alright; the two of them start exchanging e-mails again after a brief pause, and their messages are full of enthusiastic love that somehow make him feel terrible and wonderful all at once.

_My new team is the greatest!_ (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ _Senpai is pretty harsh sometimes, but he does it to make us better_ ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ _I'm going to train hard and beat everyone next time! Please come watch my game next time!_

It's not like he's lying when he hits _Send_ , but an air of bittersweetness still trails each word.

Truth is he misses her.

...Truth is he misses a lot of things.

But life gets... easier, gradually; his days are filled with straightforward laughter and the excitement of teamwork, and before long he feels some of the more hollow parts of himself becoming alive again.

They might not light him up like phosphorous fire, but it's something, and each morning he looks forward to the day the silent weight inside of him finally dissolves.

He'll see Aomine at matches and hold his stare as though their past belongs to someone else's life; they'll exchange brief words with cautious distance, until the traces of their friendship seem but a vivid, distant dream. It's as far as he can go, because there are shadows that lurk beneath the implications of any extra seconds Aomine spends staring his way.

(And while there are times he wonders what might have happened if he'd answered those messages or showed up again –if he'd ever, if only for a second, asked Aomine what that single line in an exam truly _meant_ –, there's.... no room for regret.)

It doesn't feel bad.

It doesn't really feel like anything, really; and it's during those seconds that Kise wonders if his ambition has finally let go of this hopeless, doomed rivalry he once thought existed between the two of them.

He never wanted it to mean anything, because it was so much easier to pretend like it didn't. It's only fitting that somewhere along the line he has become but a self-fulfilling prophecy of ironic proportions.

Either way, he can learn to live with that, he thinks;

(but then his phone will come alive with Momoi's frantic messages and _God why would he do that, why would he go and beat up Haizaki he knows what's at stake_ and something feels like clicking right back to where they started.)

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

He stares at the unfinished e-mail for hours.

 

 

_I lied. I take it back. I take it back._

_(please come back)_

 

 

He presses delete instead.

He presses delete on each e-mail every single night, wishing that back in the day, he'd answered at least one.

 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

A month later Kise feels someone coyly nudging on his sleeve as he walks down the street.

When he turns around a pretty, doe-eyed girl looks up at him with a delicate blush adorning her cheeks, and laughs awkwardly.

_Excuse me, but you're Kiseryo-kun, right? Could you... would you please sign this... please?_

A faint glow of something he wistfully recognizes from years ago trails each gesture, as the girl hands out a magazine opened at a specific page. Afterwards, she quickly hides her hands behind the pleats of her skirt and averts her eyes.

_This is my favourite issue. It's the first one I read._

He nods along solemnly; as far as fan run-ins go, this is one of the more pleasant ones. In normal situations, this is where his thoughts might start to drift, as he pulls out a marker pen and tries to decide whether to finish the signature with a heart or a star.

In normal situations, he might even know to expect her following words, but then, the girl's voice suddenly catches him off guard.

_I saw your face, that wonderful smile, and I knew you were someone special. But... it was your ambition, that made me fall in love with you at first glance._

His marker stills.

Beneath it is a printed image of his grinning face, pulling some overtly cheerful expression, and a text box right next to his name screams enthusiastically:

_Whatever you do, you have to be honest with yourself!_

In that moment, the box of memories beneath his bed comes undone, and floods his mind with everything he has ever tried to forget.

 

 

He remembers the taunts and the jeers and the insufferable leers, how his heart would skip a beat every time Aomine grinned a wide, toothy smile at him after a game; the hysterical scrambling to escape faculty members after breaking a window in a completely innocent match of broom baseball, and how Momoi punched them both in the face; he remembers the boastful dreams, the arrogant sneers, and how it was impossible to tell if Aomine was ever serious about anything in his life, but somehow, decoding that was part of the charm.

He remembers the delicate warmth of a shared secret, the private, bashful look on Aomine's face in the dead hours of the morning, and the gradual way they eventually grew accustomed to each other's bodies as though they were always simply biding their time; remembers all the tiny gestures of stifled love that he was trying not to read anything into, with Aomine's fingertips on his wrist and breath on his neck, and the sinking, renounced frustration that somehow, wanting more than this was a... crime?

As the flashes wind around his heart, Kise knows he's still losing, in ways that he has never even imagined; but it's alright, it doesn't matter, because he might keep losing for as long as he lives but he'd still rather be himself than mimic something he doesn't believe in anymore.

(Because the truth is that all of it mattered, always

more than anything ever did, or would do again)

_You have to be honest with yourself_ , the old him grins at Kise from a shiny idol photograph, and all at once he feels like exploding and imploding like a colourful firework in the sky.

And maybe there is no such thing as ambition at first glance,

maybe everything he's ever known about love is a lie,

but he feels that familiar light seeping from his hands again, and somehow, somehow he knows it's finally time.

 

 

A story only ever has an unhappy end if finished prematurely.

It doesn't mean it's easy, or that the fear of failure never really goes away.

But you can't fake something you don't believe in forever, and so;

that night, the display of his phone screams ✧ﾟ･: * _Aominecchi_ *:･ﾟ✧ for two hours straight, but his thumb finally presses _Send_.

 

 

(A minute and a half later the screen vibrates, and he can read the message on the display in its concise entirety:

_Took you fucking long enough.)_

 

fin


End file.
